Shows
Owl PostingNeurotechnology? For Cancer? (Ben Woodington & Elise Jenkins)Youtube:https://youtu.be/JAxkqb-nBWsSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6BLZph2uGGUVphbNQ8NGPd?si=SVBSKJM8RdO4AhYzDa-ZfQApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3OU5Zse Transcript: https://www.owlposting.com/i/189602943/transcriptThis is an episode with Ben Woodington and Elise Jenkins, who are the cofounders of Coherence Neuro. The pitch for Coherence is as follows: a brain implant that treats cancer with electricity. When I first learned of the company in mid-2025, it was such an alien thesis that I instinctively wrote it off entirely. This surely isn’t...
2026-03-021h 33
Works in Progress PodcastShould everyone be taking statins?Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but it’s also one of medicine’s biggest success stories. Since the 1950s, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease has fallen dramatically, thanks to public health efforts, emergency care, medical innovation, and surgeries.In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore the cholesterol revolution: from statins discovered in fungi to new drugs that cut LDL cholesterol by 60% and last for months, driven by breakthroughs in genetics, monoclonal antibodies, RNA therapies, and modern medicinal chemistry. They talk about how cholesterol travels through the bloodstream, how it causes atherosclerosis and...
2026-02-272h 54
Hard DrugsShould everyone be taking statins?Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but it’s also one of medicine’s biggest success stories. Since the 1950s, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease has fallen dramatically, thanks to public health efforts, emergency care, medical innovation, and surgeries.In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore the cholesterol revolution: from statins discovered in fungi to new drugs that cut LDL cholesterol by 60% and last for months, driven by breakthroughs in genetics, monoclonal antibodies, RNA therapies, and modern medicinal chemistry. They talk about how cholesterol travels through the bloodstream, how it causes atherosclerosis and...
2026-02-272h 54
LessWrong (Curated & Popular)"The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference" by Abhishaike Mahajan In 1654, a Jesuit polymath named Athanasius Kircher published Mundus Subterraneus, a comprehensive geography of the Earth's interior. It had maps and illustrations and rivers of fire and vast subterranean oceans and air channels connecting every volcano on the planet. He wrote that “the whole Earth is not solid but everywhere gaping, and hollowed with empty rooms and spaces, and hidden burrows.”. Alongside comments like this, Athanasius identified the legendary lost island of Atlantis, pondered where one could find the remains of giants, and detailed the kinds of animals that lived in this lower world, including dragons. The book was based enti...
2026-02-1718 min
LessWrong (30+ Karma)“Heuristics for lab robotics, and where its future may go” by Abhishaike Mahajan Note: this article required conversations with a lot of people. A (hopefully) exhaustive, randomized list of everyone whose thoughts contributed to the article: Lachlan Munroe (Head of Automation at DTU Biosustain), Max Hodak (CEO of Science, former founder of Transcriptic), D.J. Kleinbaum (CEO of Emerald Cloud Labs), Keoni Gandall (former founder of Trilobio), Cristian Ponce (CEO of Tetsuwan Scientific), Brontë Kolar (CEO of Zeon Systems), Jason Kelly (CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks), Jun Axup Penman (COO of E11 Bio), Nish Bhat (current VC, ex-Color cofounder), Amulya Garimella (MIT PhD student), Shelby Newsad (VC at Compound), Michelle Lee (CEO of M...
2026-02-1054 minLessWrong (30+ Karma)“The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference” by Abhishaike Mahajan In 1654, a Jesuit polymath named Athanasius Kircher published Mundus Subterraneus, a comprehensive geography of the Earth's interior. It had maps and illustrations and rivers of fire and vast subterranean oceans and air channels connecting every volcano on the planet. He wrote that “the whole Earth is not solid but everywhere gaping, and hollowed with empty rooms and spaces, and hidden burrows.”. Alongside comments like this, Athanasius identified the legendary lost island of Atlantis, pondered where one could find the remains of giants, and detailed the kinds of animals that lived in this lower world, including dragons. The book was base...
2026-01-1718 min
Works in Progress PodcastThe first cancer vaccineHepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral protein subunit vaccine, the first recombinant vaccine, and the first vaccine to prevent a type of cancer. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni follow the trail of strange jaundice outbreaks that scientists traced to a stealthy liver virus, how scientists turned one viral surface protein into a lifesaving shot for newborns, and how it was all built upon breakthroughs in immunology.
2025-12-222h 58Hard DrugsThe first cancer vaccineHepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral protein subunit vaccine, the first recombinant vaccine, and the first vaccine to prevent a type of cancer. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni follow the trail of strange jaundice outbreaks that scientists traced to a stealthy liver virus, how scientists turned one viral surface protein into a lifesaving shot for newborns, and how it was all built upon breakthroughs in immunology.
2025-12-222h 58
Owl PostingWhat if we could grow human tissue by recapitulating embryogenesis? (Matthew Osman & Fabio Boniolo)This is an interview with Matthew Osman and Fabio Boniolo, the co-founders of Polyphron.The thesis behind Polyphron is equal parts nauseating and exciting in how ambitious it is: growing ex-vivo tissue to use in organ repair.And, truthfully, it felt so ambitious as to not be possible at all. When I had my first (of several) pre-podcast chats with Matt and Fabio to understand what they were doing, I expressed every ounce of skepticism I had about how this couldn’t possibly be viable. Everybody knows that complex tissue engineering is...
2025-12-172h 01
Owl PostingWe don't know what most microbial genes do. Can genomic language models help? (Yunha Hwang, Ep #7)Note: Thank you to rush.cloud and latch.bio for sponsoring this episode!Rush is augmenting drug discovery for all scientists with machine-driven superintelligence.LatchBio is building agentic scientific tooling that can analyze a wide range of scientific data, with an early focus on spatial biology. Clip on them in the episode.If you’re at all interested in sponsoring future episodes, reach out!***This is an interview with Yunha Hwang, an assistant professor at MIT (and co-founder of the non-profit Tatta Bio). She is working on bu...
2025-12-081h 42Hard DrugsThe history of vaccinesBefore vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms” to see how scientists stumbled toward the first vaccines against infectious diseases: smallpox, rabies, TB, polio, and more. Through the stories of milkmaids and aristocrats, secret lab notebooks, microscopes and cell culture, they explore how trial and error turned gruesome folk practices into the science of immunization, and how it all began with a single pustule.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Coefficient Giving about medical inno...
2025-11-262h 06
Works in Progress PodcastThe history of vaccinesBefore vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms” to see how scientists stumbled toward the first vaccines against infectious diseases: smallpox, rabies, TB, polio, and more. Through the stories of milkmaids and aristocrats, secret lab notebooks, microscopes and cell culture, they explore how trial and error turned gruesome folk practices into the science of immunization, and how it all began with a single pustule.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Coefficient Giving about medical inno...
2025-11-262h 06
Owl PostingBringing organ-scale cryopreservation into existence (Hunter Davis, Ep #6)Sponsor note: the supporter of this video is rush.cloud. If you are at all involved with doing preclinical drug discovery and would benefit from computational tools, you should check out their platform + beautiful website here: rush.cloud.If you’re at all interested in working together for future episodes, reach out!This is an interview with Hunter Davis, the CSO and co-founder (alongside Laura Deming) of Until Labs, which you may also know by its prior name, Cradle. They are a biotech startup devoted to organ-scale cryopreservation. They raised a $58M Series A back in...
2025-11-241h 54
Owl PostingCan machine learning enable 100-plex cryo-EM structure determination? (Ellen Zhong, Ep #5)Sponsor note: I am extremely happy to announce my first commercial, service-oriented sponsor: rush.cloud. I’ve been doing these podcasts entirely through very kind philanthropic graces, which is very nice, but I’d ideally like to be helping someone when they sponsor me. And now I have that! So, if you are at all involved doing preclinical drug discovery and would benefit from computational tools, you should check out their platform + beautiful website here: rush.cloud.******Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0m3Ltz_YqUApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com...
2025-11-101h 40LessWrong (Curated & Popular)“Cancer has a surprising amount of detail” by Abhishaike Mahajan There is a very famous essay titled ‘Reality has a surprising amount of detail’. The thesis of the article is that reality is filled, just filled, with an incomprehensible amount of materially important information, far more than most people would naively expect. Some of this detail is inherent in the physical structure of the universe, and the rest of it has been generated by centuries of passionate humans imbibing the subject with idiosyncratic convention. In either case, the detail is very, very important. A wooden table is “just” a flat slab of wood on legs until you try building one at indus...
2025-10-3023 minHard DrugsThe art of protein design with AIWhat if you could design a protein never seen in nature? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore how researchers are using new tools like RFDiffusion, AlphaFold, and ProteinMPNN to ‘hallucinate’ entirely novel proteins: designing them from scratch to solve problems evolution hasn’t tackled. They talk about how these technologies could transform medicine, agriculture, and materials science. Along the way, they reflect on the surprising ways AI is changing the process of science itself.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefet...
2025-10-151h 00
Works in Progress PodcastThe art of protein design with AIWhat if you could design a protein never seen before? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore how researchers are using new tools like RFDiffusion, AlphaFold, and ProteinMPNN to ‘hallucinate’ entirely novel proteins: designing them from scratch to solve problems evolution hasn’t tackled. They talk about how these technologies could transform medicine, agriculture, and materials science. Along the way, they reflect on the surprising ways AI is changing the process of science itself.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.S...
2025-10-151h 00Hard DrugsHacking proteins with AINature didn’t evolve all the proteins we need, but maybe artificial intelligence can help. Jacob and Saloni explore how tools like AlphaFold and ProteinMPNN are helping researchers re-engineer proteins, to make them safer, more stable, and more effective. They talk about how new technologies could help make a long-sought vaccine against Strep A, which causes scarlet fever and rheumatic heart disease, and how similar tools have already led to breakthroughs against COVID and RSV.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Tr...
2025-10-0154 min
Works in Progress PodcastHacking proteins with AINature didn’t evolve all the proteins we need, but maybe artificial intelligence can help. Jacob and Saloni explore how tools like AlphaFold and ProteinMPNN are helping researchers re-engineer proteins, to make them safer, more stable, and more effective. They talk about how new technologies could help make a long-sought vaccine against Strep A, which causes scarlet fever and rheumatic heart disease, and how similar tools have already led to breakthroughs against COVID and RSV.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Tr...
2025-10-0154 minHard Drugs100 years of insulin in 15 minutesA hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug development and AI, Saloni tells the story of how insulin went from a crude animal extract to the first genetically-engineered drug, kickstarting the biotech industry along the way.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/Jacob’s blog...
2025-09-1617 min
Works in Progress Podcast100 years of insulin in 15 minutesA hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug development and AI, Saloni tells the story of how insulin went from a crude animal extract to the first genetically-engineered drug, kickstarting the biotech industry along the way.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/Jacob’s blog...
2025-09-1617 min
Owl PostingThe DNA protection company (Alan Tomusiak, Ep #4)Note: Extremely grateful for Geltor (http://geltor.com/) for sponsoring this podcast, and for the founder of it (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlorestani) for reaching out to make to start with! Geltor produces designer proteins for beauty and wellness.The current in-vogue thing to do for most longevity companies is to go for cellular reprogramming. As in, fill a cell with the right transcription factors needed to reduce epigenetic noise, restore mitochondrial dysfunction, and so on. I’ve written about the promise there before, it’s definitely an exciting field.So, when I first met...
2025-07-281h 43LessWrong (Curated & Popular)“Endometriosis is an incredibly interesting disease” by Abhishaike Mahajan Introduction There are several diseases that are canonically recognized as ‘interesting’, even by laymen. Whether that is in their mechanism of action, their impact on the patient, or something else entirely. It's hard to tell exactly what makes a medical condition interesting, it's a you-know-it-when-you-see-it sort of thing. One such example is measles. Measles is an unremarkable disease based solely on its clinical progression: fever, malaise, coughing, and a relatively low death rate of 0.2%~. What is astonishing about the disease is its capacity to infect cells of the adaptive immune system (memory B‑ and T-cell...
2025-06-1935 min
Owl PostingWhat could Alphafold 4 look like? (Sergey Ovchinnikov, Ep #3)X: https://x.com/owl_postingSergey's X: https://x.com/sokryptonYoutube: https://youtu.be/6_RFXNxy62cSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wPs3rmp0zrfauqToozrcv?si=DCtRf-xQTPiVYwslo-b2rQApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-could-alphafold-4-look-like-sergey-ovchinnikov-3/id1758545538?i=1000704927828Transcript: https://www.owlposting.com/p/what-could-alphafold-4-look-like?open=false#%C2%A7transcriptTo those in the protein design space, Dr. Sergey Ovchinnikov is a very, very well-recognized name.A recent MIT professor (circa early 2024), he has played a part in a staggering...
2025-04-252h 06
Owl PostingHow do you make a 250x better vaccine at 1/10 the cost? Develop it in India. (Soham Sankaran, Ep #2)This is an interview with Soham Sankaran, the founder and CEO of PopVax, an mRNA vaccine development startup.Curiously, PopVax is based in India, specifically Hyderabad. This should be a surprise to most people in the field: we never really hear of interesting biotech research being done in a place that isn’t [US, Europe, East Asia].Yet, PopVax has been astonishingly successful, having a (in mouse) influenza vaccine that is 250x better than its competitors, multiple large research collaborations, and their first upcoming US based phase 1 clinical trial being fully sponsored and co...
2025-02-032h 15
Owl PostingCan AI improve the current state of molecular simulation? (Corin & Ari Wagen, Ep #1)In my first (real) podcast episode, I talk with Corin and Ari Wagen, two brothers who I met through my writing. They are building something super cool: a molecular simulation company called Rowan (which recently got into the Nat Friedman AI grant program). We discuss neural network potentials (NNP’s), whether dynamics are useful at all, the role of computational chemistry in drug design, what the future of the field looks like for molecular simulation, and a lot more.If you work in molecular simulation, I recommend trying out their tool at rowansci.com. I’m not a ch...
2024-12-042h 09
Qwerky Science19. Manic Theory w/ Jeremy HadfieldHad an amazing discussion with the wonderful Jeremy Hadfield. Bipolar disorder is discussed as an evolutionary adaptation that benefits the group, playing the role of the 'shaman' who can break from the cultural norms and help define new social rules. The lack of aversion may help these individuals oppose social norms and allow divergent thoughts that oppose the consensus. We attempt to elaborate on, define, and understand the manic condition. Jeremy has very interesting perspectives on human history, bipolar disorder, and philosophy.
Special thanks to the two patrons, Abhishaike Mahajan and Charles Wright! Another thanks to Chris who made this...
2020-04-101h 33
Qwerky Science18. Psychedelics, Madness, and MechanismsWe cover the literature on psychedelics and mental health, psychedelics as a potential treatment for schizophrenia (only lightly covered, see the blog post for the entire argument), and a rambling of ideas pertaining to these topics. For the citations, check out the post titled Psychedelics and Schizophrenia, linked below.
Special thanks to the two patrons, Abhishaike Mahajan and Charles Wright! Abhi is also the artist who created the cover image for Most Relevant. Please support him on instagram, he is an amazing artist!
Psychedelics and Schizophrenia:
https://mad.science.blog/2019/10/12/psychedelics-and-schizophrenia/
https://www.instagram.com/abuuty.art/
Subscribe on iTunes:
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2020-04-082h 02
Qwerky Science17. Neural Atomization Feat. Qualia Computing's Andres EmilssonA special guest appears for the first episode of the season! Andres Emilsson from QRI and Qualia Computing has graced us with some epic discussion. We explore the Neural Annealing concept and how Cognitive Atomization fits in as well as discussion of human development, perception, evolution, psychedelics, ketamine, and more. The conversation was one of the most interesting I've had in a while. Hope you enjoy!
Special thanks to the two patrons, Abhishaike Mahajan and Charles Wright! Abhi is also the artist who created the cover image for Most Relevant. Please support him on instagram, he is an amazing artist!
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2020-03-252h 42